StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

[Dekuman]

I had no idea the OLED is cheaper to produce. Perhaps they can create a Switch V3 with the less complexity materials of an OLED but with the cheaper plastics of a V2 and cheaper LCD and 32GB internal memory. It's not unusual to make a revision so late in a generation to cut further costs, they did that with Wii when they removed Gamecube ports and of course 2DS.

Bloomberg had an article indicating OLED profit margin was higher than regular Switch when accounting for the price bump, but Nintendo chief Furukawa kept insisting in investor Q&As the margin wasn't greater. Granted he was speaking in the middle of the chip shortage, so it's quite possible BOM rose in 2020/2021 as Nintendo struggled to get parts or he was only speaking about something that was true from a certain point of view. But those issues should slowly be resolved moving forward.

 

[Pokemaniac]

I stand corrected, I still think Switch 2 should at least come with 256GB internal storage so it can always have 2 largest sized games installed without the need for an SD card when buying digital.

It's also worth noting that we're also reasonably certain that Drake includes dedicated silicon for file decompression, which should lighten the load of decompression at runtime.

 

[kalosmani]

Another wild idea from me for fun. I'm just trying to throw as many darts on the board so if I'm right I can comeback and say look I got it right.

Switch 2 comes in 2 SKUs

Switch 2S and Switch 2

Switch 2 is what everyone is expecting a more powerful Switch.

Switch 2S is the same but has 2 Screens. The form factor is similar to a Lenovo Yoga. They can have a fun ad campaign. Place the Switch on a table with one screen facing each side for 2 player games with 2 people facing opposite eachother. Games can include table tennis with motion controls similar to Wii Sports resort table tennis. Another idea is games that rely on mechanics where you are not supposed to know what the other person is doing like Nintendoland games or board games like Battleship. Dual screens can also be beneficial for lots tabletop mode games that could use the extra screen without tiny split screen such as Mario Kart. Of course dual screens can also be used for traditional one player handheld games where 2nd screen is used for maps and inventory like we seen on 3DS. This could be the new gimmick and would be an extension of DS and Wii U pad with the Lenovo Yoga form factor for opposite local tabletop mode play.

 

[Skittzo]

Another wild idea from me for fun. I'm just trying to throw as many darts on the board so if I'm right I can comeback and say look I got it right.

Switch 2 comes in 2 SKUs

Switch 2S and Switch 2

Switch 2 is what everyone is expecting a more powerful Switch.

Switch 2S is the same but has 2 Screens. The form factor is similar to a Lenovo Yoga. They can have a fun ad campaign. Place the Switch on a table with one screen facing each side for 2 player games with 2 people facing opposite eachother. Games can include table tennis with motion controls similar to Wii Sports resort table tennis. Another idea is games that rely on mechanics where you are not supposed to know what the other person is doing like Nintendoland games or board games like Battleship. Dual screens can also be beneficial for lots tabletop mode games that could use the extra screen without tiny split screen such as Mario Kart. Of course dual screens can also be used for traditional one player handheld games where 2nd screen is used for maps and inventory like we seen on 3DS. This could be the new gimmick and would be an extension of DS and Wii U pad with the Lenovo Yoga form factor for opposite local tabletop mode play.

I love this idea. Not sure how easy it would be to implement effectively but it sounds just like something they'd do.

 

[kalosmani]

I love this idea. Not sure how easy it would be to implement effectively but it sounds just like something they'd do.

Ad campaign idea.

Scene 1
Guy playing Zelda on the TV, finishes, walks over to Dock and takes the Switch out of the Dock. (Audience notices there seems to be no screen and are thinking WTF). Guy goes to walk his dog in the park sits on bench pulls the Switch out to reveal it's a clamshell design Switch with 2 screens, now Zelda uses the 2nd screen for maps and inventory (yes this is a remake of the initial Switch reveal)

Scene 2
2 women playing Tennis in a tennis court. They finish up and go to the locker room. 1 of them pulls out a Switch to reveal its Lenovo Yoga form factor. They face opposite eschother with the Switch in the middle 1 person detaches joycons and passed 1 jotlycon to the other person where they then go on to play table tennis where each person have their own screen to view and plenty of space to do motion control movements without waking eachother besides them.

Scene 3
Family dinner scene. Mum, dad, son and daughter. They finish eating dinner, Daughter pulls out the Switch and challenges dad to a game of Battleship where mum cheers on daughter in 1 side and son cheers on dad on the other.

Scene 4
Stylus (yes Switch also has a digital stylus similar to Apple Pen) is used to play a 3DS/DS game using Nintendo Online Catalogue in handheld mode. The Switch is then docked and the person the. Continues to play game on TV using Joycon motion pointer as a stylus replacement.

Scene 5
A graphics demanding game is played (maybe Red Dead 2) to show Switch's power.

 

[slsk]

Some thoughts on storage.

The literature will say that volatile memory like SD cards should be more expensive than a simpler mask ROM used for game cards. In reality there are lots of factories competing in a race to the bottom on SD cards and these economies of scale mean that it is very hard for other forms of storage to compete on price. Nintendo appears to be stuck with a single supplier for the game card tech and has to ensure quality too (they are plenty of dud/fake/slow SD cards but you never hear about a DOA game card).

The PS4 and XBO used Bluray discs, had slow spinning rust hard drives and they also had fairly weak CPUs. This drove developers to adopt a few techniques that resulted in games becoming far larger during that generation; you can reduce CPU load by using raw uncompressed assets and you can reduce load times from spinning media by duplicating data so that it can be read in a single sequential stream (instead of having to seek around the disk performing random reads). The PS5 and the Xbox Series mandate installs to solid-state storage and have better audio and decompression capabilities so these techniques are not needed and game sizes can actually start going down again.

If Nintendo wants to use DLSS @ 4K then they will need a lot more storage because textures will need to be 4K too. DLSS cannot upscale textures so Nvidia recommends this (43:38):

 

[Deleted member 1324]

in general I agree, but ungrateful??? what exactly should this thread be grateful for? thinking the switch pro would come in 2021, thinking it would come in 2022, or thinking it would come in the first half of 2023?

I very much believe in not assuming people's intentions, not demanding reliable facts, and not harassing or chastising people for changed plans or missed communication, but the other end of the pendulum on which we should be grateful for our rumors that are increasingly detached from what actually comes to market is almost as ridiculous.

people are rude, people are cringe, and I'll even concede that I'm guilty if both. but "ungrateful little worms" is just way over the top lmfao

People should be grateful to Nate because he shares insider info at great risk to people’s jobs which takes time to work on and verify. He also has a great track record compared to most insiders who regularly ‘miss’. He also makes a great podcast free of charge. He also seems like a really nice, genuine guy who has to eat shit every time he visits this website. Like I said I wonder why he even bothers if not just bypasses this site entirely and shares his info on his podcast.

Yes the ratio of idiots that abuse him to nice people is weighted to nice people but it must get old. So yeah there’s a decent amount of ungrateful people in this thread when it comes to the info he shares.

A good indicator I’ve noticed is post count. It seems like most of the idiots are people who have joined the site in the past month, in part it seems just to have a go at him or people with below 100 posts. I have a ton of people on ignore and still see the shit he gets. He should get a cut of this sites ad revenue as he’s a draw much like fighters get PPV points

Just noticed I got a warning for defending a decent guy for being abused… wow.

Perma Ban requested.

Peace out. Enjoy May

 

[kalosmani]

Some thoughts on storage.

The literature will say that volatile memory like SD cards should be more expensive than a simpler mask ROM used for game cards. In reality there are lots of factories competing in a race to the bottom on SD cards and these economies of scale mean that it is very hard for other forms of storage to compete on price. Nintendo appears to be stuck with a single supplier for the game card tech and has to ensure quality too (they are plenty of dud/fake/slow SD cards but you never hear about a DOA game card).

The PS4 and XBO used Bluray discs, had slow spinning rust hard drives and they also had fairly weak CPUs. This drove developers to adopt a few techniques that resulted in games becoming far larger during that generation; you can reduce CPU load by using raw uncompressed assets and you can reduce load times from spinning media by duplicating data so that it can be read in a single sequential stream (instead of having to seek around the disk performing random reads). The PS5 and the Xbox Series mandate installs to solid-state storage and have better audio and decompression capabilities so these techniques are not needed and game sizes can actually start going down again.

If Nintendo wants to use DLSS @ 4K then they will need a lot more storage because textures will need to be 4K too. DLSS cannot upscale textures so Nvidia recommends this (43:38):

I don't have technical knowledge but does having 4k textures decrease performance. Would be quite wasteful to have 4k textures then if you are only playing in handheld mode

 

[Ojoloco]

About the game sizes, with the FDC (the decompression chip), the size can be smallers than other platforms.

In fact, a lot of switch games are smallers thanks to the different techniques of compression

 

[ArchedThunder]

Some thoughts on storage.

The literature will say that volatile memory like SD cards should be more expensive than a simpler mask ROM used for game cards. In reality there are lots of factories competing in a race to the bottom on SD cards and these economies of scale mean that it is very hard for other forms of storage to compete on price. Nintendo appears to be stuck with a single supplier for the game card tech and has to ensure quality too (they are plenty of dud/fake/slow SD cards but you never hear about a DOA game card).

The PS4 and XBO used Bluray discs, had slow spinning rust hard drives and they also had fairly weak CPUs. This drove developers to adopt a few techniques that resulted in games becoming far larger during that generation; you can reduce CPU load by using raw uncompressed assets and you can reduce load times from spinning media by duplicating data so that it can be read in a single sequential stream (instead of having to seek around the disk performing random reads). The PS5 and the Xbox Series mandate installs to solid-state storage and have better audio and decompression capabilities so these techniques are not needed and game sizes can actually start going down again.

If Nintendo wants to use DLSS @ 4K then they will need a lot more storage because textures will need to be 4K too. DLSS cannot upscale textures so Nvidia recommends this (43:38):

“4K textures” aren’t really a thing. A 4K texture is just any texture that looks good in a game that is 4K, which describes most textures in PS4/XBO games.

 

[kvetcha]

People should be grateful to Nate because he shares insider info at great risk to people’s jobs which takes time to work on and verify. He also has a great track record compared to most insiders who regularly ‘miss’. He also makes a great podcast free of charge. He also seems like a really nice, genuine guy who has to eat shit every time he visits this website. Like I said I wonder why he even bothers if not just bypasses this site entirely and shares his info on his podcast.

Yes the ratio of idiots that abuse him to nice people is weighted to nice people but it must get old. So yeah there’s a decent amount of ungrateful people in this thread when it comes to the info he shares.

A good indicator I’ve noticed is post count. It seems like most of the idiots are people who have joined the site in the past month, in part it seems just to have a go at him or people with below 100 posts. I have a ton of people on ignore and still see the shit he gets. He should get a cut of this sites ad revenue as he’s a draw much like fighters get PPV points

Just noticed I got a warning for defending a decent guy for being abused… wow.

Perma Ban requested.

Peace out. Enjoy May

Can’t blame you. Peace out, @Polygon.

 

[RailWays]

People should be grateful to Nate because he shares insider info at great risk to people’s jobs which takes time to work on and verify. He also has a great track record compared to most insiders who regularly ‘miss’. He also makes a great podcast free of charge. He also seems like a really nice, genuine guy who has to eat shit every time he visits this website. Like I said I wonder why he even bothers if not just bypasses this site entirely and shares his info on his podcast.

Yes the ratio of idiots that abuse him to nice people is weighted to nice people but it must get old. So yeah there’s a decent amount of ungrateful people in this thread when it comes to the info he shares.

A good indicator I’ve noticed is post count. It seems like most of the idiots are people who have joined the site in the past month, in part it seems just to have a go at him or people with below 100 posts. I have a ton of people on ignore and still see the shit he gets. He should get a cut of this sites ad revenue as he’s a draw much like fighters get PPV points

Just noticed I got a warning for defending a decent guy for being abused… wow.

Perma Ban requested.

Peace out. Enjoy May

Is what it is. Cheers, @Polygon

 

[Concernt]

It's a shame fo see someone go, but alas. We will live.

I hope to enjoy May myself. As I've expressed in excruciating detail, I have no reason to believe this thing won't be out by May's end.

 

[RailWays]

It's a shame fo see someone go, but alas. We will live.

I hope to enjoy May myself. As I've expressed in excruciating detail, I have no reason to believe this thing won't be out by May's end.

Guess it depends on whether there will be another marquee title of similar magnitude in the winter. Like I could see it missing ToTK timeframe if there was a Mario title launching later in the year. Still believe in 2023 though unless some new information comes

 

[Deleted member 887]

I don't have technical knowledge but does having 4k textures decrease performance. Would be quite wasteful to have 4k textures then if you are only playing in handheld mode

You come out of the cave of resurrection in Breath of the Wild, and you look out over Hyrule, it would bring even the most powerful machine to an absolute standstill if you have to load a full resolution texture for every object even the ones in the far distance that only take up a couple of pixels of screen space. Instead, games store something called a mipmap, which is a specially compressed texture that contains the same image at multiple resolutions where you can quickly get whatever sized version you need.

Up close? Use the highest res version. Far away? Use the lowest. "4K" textures would work the same way in handheld mode. The only penalty would be in storage space.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

People should be grateful to Nate because he shares insider info at great risk to people’s jobs which takes time to work on and verify. He also has a great track record compared to most insiders who regularly ‘miss’. He also makes a great podcast free of charge. He also seems like a really nice, genuine guy who has to eat shit every time he visits this website. Like I said I wonder why he even bothers if not just bypasses this site entirely and shares his info on his podcast.

Yes the ratio of idiots that abuse him to nice people is weighted to nice people but it must get old. So yeah there’s a decent amount of ungrateful people in this thread when it comes to the info he shares.

A good indicator I’ve noticed is post count. It seems like most of the idiots are people who have joined the site in the past month, in part it seems just to have a go at him or people with below 100 posts. I have a ton of people on ignore and still see the shit he gets. He should get a cut of this sites ad revenue as he’s a draw much like fighters get PPV points

Just noticed I got a warning for defending a decent guy for being abused… wow.

Perma Ban requested.

Peace out. Enjoy May

I’m sorry, even despite the staff post, I’m just gonna say this: this is like the seventh or eighth time you said you’re leaving only to come back after a few days or a few weeks.

 

[DariliumA]

People should be grateful to Nate because he shares insider info at great risk to people’s jobs which takes time to work on and verify. He also has a great track record compared to most insiders who regularly ‘miss’. He also makes a great podcast free of charge. He also seems like a really nice, genuine guy who has to eat shit every time he visits this website. Like I said I wonder why he even bothers if not just bypasses this site entirely and shares his info on his podcast.

Yes the ratio of idiots that abuse him to nice people is weighted to nice people but it must get old. So yeah there’s a decent amount of ungrateful people in this thread when it comes to the info he shares.

A good indicator I’ve noticed is post count. It seems like most of the idiots are people who have joined the site in the past month, in part it seems just to have a go at him or people with below 100 posts. I have a ton of people on ignore and still see the shit he gets. He should get a cut of this sites ad revenue as he’s a draw much like fighters get PPV points

Just noticed I got a warning for defending a decent guy for being abused… wow.

Perma Ban requested.

Peace out. Enjoy May

Despite the staff post, I’m gonna say this is very convenient for you to go out now when you said you’d get more info from your friends at the pub on New Year’s Eve then got nothing and then said « no one’s going to the pub in January ». We are tired, this adds nothing to the conversation but a tense climate so please next time (if you don’t leave), reconsider what you want to say and bring to the table. I’m not doubting the veracity of what you’re saying (one will form their own opinion on this), but considering your (self-declared) insider position what you say and when you say it will be analyzed to no end and will add to the whole downpour climate of this thread. It’s a two way street for both speculators and insiders.

 

[Deleted member 645]

Very confident we are getting new hardware this year. Almost willing to say bank on it.

 

[Hidden04]

I mean, we've gotten new hardware every two years.

 

[Boxle]

At the risk of sounding too confident.

Spoiler

 

[ILikeFeet]

Nvidia will be holding a webinar on ue5 and their new lovelace rt tech like ser and omm.

Level Up with NVIDIA

In this webinar series, creators and developers can connect with NVIDIA experts and ask questions about their game integrations.

gateway.on24.com

 

[kalosmani]

Very confident we are getting new hardware this year. Almost willing to say bank on it.

I think there is a higher chance it will release in May over November. Zelda and Switch 2 releasing at the same time makes too much sense. Also Mario is releasing in April, they can also have Switch 2 ads playing in ads for Mario in the threatres. Then you have Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Suicide Squad, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy which are all games releasing on PS4 that can easily have ports releasing either day 1 or not too long after PS4 versions of those games.

 

[Alovon11]

I stand corrected, I still think Switch 2 should at least come with 256GB internal storage so it can always have 2 largest sized games installed without the need for an SD card when buying digital.

Some thoughts on storage.

The literature will say that volatile memory like SD cards should be more expensive than a simpler mask ROM used for game cards. In reality there are lots of factories competing in a race to the bottom on SD cards and these economies of scale mean that it is very hard for other forms of storage to compete on price. Nintendo appears to be stuck with a single supplier for the game card tech and has to ensure quality too (they are plenty of dud/fake/slow SD cards but you never hear about a DOA game card).

The PS4 and XBO used Bluray discs, had slow spinning rust hard drives and they also had fairly weak CPUs. This drove developers to adopt a few techniques that resulted in games becoming far larger during that generation; you can reduce CPU load by using raw uncompressed assets and you can reduce load times from spinning media by duplicating data so that it can be read in a single sequential stream (instead of having to seek around the disk performing random reads). The PS5 and the Xbox Series mandate installs to solid-state storage and have better audio and decompression capabilities so these techniques are not needed and game sizes can actually start going down again.

If Nintendo wants to use DLSS @ 4K then they will need a lot more storage because textures will need to be 4K too. DLSS cannot upscale textures so Nvidia recommends this (43:38):

I will say, on the note of storage size, i should remind people of Sony's discussions on the capabilities of the PS5 and storage

The Strength of the PS5's Processing and the SSDs (This applies to the Series S|X too), allows developers to

• Cut out Repeated use of assets in the installation as NAND has effective instant seek speeds
• Have access to far more sophisticated compression algorithms (Games would need to be designed/converted to them and the system would need to support good decompression)
  • How fortunate Drake in a recent analysis of leaks, seemingly has a dedicated Decompression block like the Kraken in the PS5
• A combination of the graphical fidelity achievable on the new consoles and the fast storage speeds leads to something that can drastically cut down install sizes for some types of games, Pre-Renders may no longer be needed.
  • An example of this is Final Fantasy XVI in which YoshiP has confirmed that all the footage in the recent Revenge Trailer was real-time and not pre-rendered,
    • For example, a game that made extensive use of Pre-rendered cutscenes from a previous generation, Final Fantasy 13, that game while around 48hr for the main objective completed, >100 for 100%, 9 hours of that was pre-rendered in some form either CGI or In-Engine. With the game on PC being 59GBs, and it is commonly reported that around 50GBs of that is the Pre-Rendered Cutscenes and Dual-Audio (So 25GB per language roughly)
    • If Final Fantasy XIII could run every cutscene in real-time it would fit onto the 16GB Switch Cartridge quite easily with room to stretch a bit to increase texture quality even.
  • So Next-Gen Exclusives that can utilize the instant seek speeds and far faster data speeds of the NAND storage can perform feats like FFXVI and eliminate pre-renders from the file size (Up to the developer on that, but you likely will see a split between games that are fully real-time, or games that use full-on FMV video files recorded on a high end PC rather than the older style of in-engine pre-renders)

 

[Zemya]

I think there is a higher chance it will release in May over November. Zelda and Switch 2 releasing at the same time makes too much sense. Also Mario is releasing in April, they can also have Switch 2 ads playing in ads for Mario in the threatres. Then you have Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Suicide Squad, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy which are all games releasing on PS4 that can easily have ports releasing either day 1 or not too long after PS4 versions of those games.

100% not in May imo.

There just isn't enough time for everything you said to line up. If the Super Switch&Knuckles were to release in May they wouldn't have made a OLED TotK model and insta-killing its marketing spotlight.

My guess would be E3 reveal for holiday 2023 launch or holiday 2023 reveal for Spring 2024 launch. The latter would make the Switch last exactly 7 years. (Yes yes it will still be supported but you get it)

 

[Buried In Time]

If the Super Switch&Knuckles were to release in May they wouldn't have made a OLED TotK model and insta-killing its marketing spotlight.

Unless the OLED TotK model was originally produced for the Holiday 2022 launch before the delay.

 

[Alovon11]

Unless the OLED TotK model was originally produced for the Holiday 2022 launch before the delay.

That actually is a fair point.

 

[Smash Kirby]

I will say, on the note of storage size, i should remind people of Sony's discussions on the capabilities of the PS5 and storage

The Strength of the PS5's Processing and the SSDs (This applies to the Series S|X too), allows developers to

• Cut out Repeated use of assets in the installation as NAND has effective instant seek speeds
• Have access to far more sophisticated compression algorithms (Games would need to be designed/converted to them and the system would need to support good decompression)
  • How fortunate Drake in a recent analysis of leaks, seemingly has a dedicated Decompression block like the Kraken in the PS5
• A combination of the graphical fidelity achievable on the new consoles and the fast storage speeds leads to something that can drastically cut down install sizes for some types of games, Pre-Renders may no longer be needed.
  • An example of this is Final Fantasy XVI in which YoshiP has confirmed that all the footage in the recent Revenge Trailer was real-time and not pre-rendered,
    • For example, a game that made extensive use of Pre-rendered cutscenes from a previous generation, Final Fantasy 13, that game while around 48hr for the main objective completed, >100 for 100%, 9 hours of that was pre-rendered in some form either CGI or In-Engine. With the game on PC being 59GBs, and it is commonly reported that around 50GBs of that is the Pre-Rendered Cutscenes and Dual-Audio (So 25GB per language roughly)
    • If Final Fantasy XIII could run every cutscene in real-time it would fit onto the 16GB Switch Cartridge quite easily with room to stretch a bit to increase texture quality even.
  • So Next-Gen Exclusives that can utilize the instant seek speeds and far faster data speeds of the NAND storage can perform feats like FFXVI and eliminate pre-renders from the file size (Up to the developer on that, but you likely will see a split between games that are fully real-time, or games that use full-on FMV video files recorded on a high end PC rather than the older style of in-engine pre-renders)

Wasn't there a few Switch third party devs saying they were able to reduce the size due to faster data speeds on stock switch? Or am I remembering things incorrectly? Either way this is interesting and I am excited for the future of the next gen Switch.

 

[Raccoon]

Zelda OLED: April 28
Switch 2: May 12

#believe

 

[Zemya]

Unless the OLED TotK model was originally produced for the Holiday 2022 launch before the delay.

Point is I don't think the new thing would be ready by then. Even if they are sitting on everything figured out they have to play their cards correctly in terms of time schedules and we are only 4 months away.

 

[Hidden04]

Zelda OLED: April 28
Switch 2: May 12

#believe

I could see the Zelda OLED releasing in late Feb/March for BOTW/Zelda Anniversary and the Switch 2 in May.

 

[Serif]

If Switch 2 is in May, what month would Nintendo announce it?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the possibility of them revealing the Switch 2 in a near timeframe to the TotK OLED. Marketing a $400+ successor so near to a $360 special edition for Zelda enthusiasts... while the game the special edition is celebrating may be a launch title for the next-gen. It's not impossible, but amusing to think about.

 

[Concernt]

100% not in May imo.

There just isn't enough time for everything you said to line up. If the Super Switch&Knuckles were to release in May they wouldn't have made a OLED TotK model and insta-killing its marketing spotlight.

My guess would be E3 reveal for holiday 2023 launch or holiday 2023 reveal for Spring 2024 launch. The latter would make the Switch last exactly 7 years. (Yes yes it will still be supported but you get it)

Special Editions and new generation launch windows have no relation...

 

[ILikeFeet]

Wasn't there a few Switch third party devs saying they were able to reduce the size due to faster data speeds on stock switch? Or am I remembering things incorrectly? Either way this is interesting and I am excited for the future of the next gen Switch.

by virtue of not being on a spinning platter, you can remove duplicate data. Insomniac said that Spiderman could have been reduced 10GB just by removing duplicate data

 

[Concernt]

Point is I don't think the new thing would be ready by then. Even if they are sitting on everything figured out they have to play their cards correctly in terms of time schedules and we are only 4 months away.

We heard about Switch officially a little over 4 months before release, so, that sounds about right?

 

[Raccoon]

the easy solution to the succ stepping on the oled's toes is making the succ 500 usd

 

[Concernt]

the easy solution to the succ stepping on the oled's toes is making the succ 500 usd

The WHAT NOW?

 

[Kazuyamishima]

Zelda OLED: April 28
Switch 2: May 12

#believe

I believe!

 

[YugamiSekai]

Would FE Engage be the last first party release before the announcement? I could see Nintendo giving a week or two for that game to breathe since the nearest first party game to that is in late February.

 

[Buried In Time]

Could the TotK OLED model be a "golden sample"?

golden sample - an approved final sample created using the same production processes and components as will be used in mass production

The existence of a golden sample doesn't necessarily mean it's been mass produced yet. Maybe it got to that stage around the time they made the decision to delay the game and they put the kibosh on it in favor of going all in on Switch 2. Maybe some were produced but once the decision to postpone was made additional runs were cancelled and it will be sold in limited quantities as a My Nintendo Store exclusive.

 

[Hidden04]

Special Edition Switches are made far in advance so they are probably sitting on Zelda OLED stock right now.

 

[Discostew]

I don't have technical knowledge but does having 4k textures decrease performance. Would be quite wasteful to have 4k textures then if you are only playing in handheld mode

One could say that "4k" textures just means highly detailed at this point. The bigger it is, the more detail it can hold. And with that, technically larger textures do affect performance. Textures aren't utilized straight from RAM/VRAM. They are cached (in texture cache), and the GPU utilizes them from there. Cache is much more limited in size, so it can only hold so many textures at any given time, and textures get swapped in and out. The bigger the texture, the less space there is for other textures to be cached, and more swapping will be required. As @oldpuck mentioned, mipmaps also get utilized. If the scene doesn't necessarily need the most detailed of the texture levels at a point of rendering, it can cache a lower-quality version, thereby saving space.

I think I got that right, but corrections are appreciated.

 

[Truno]

So, if we get the first direct of the year that fills most of the year with software releases and there's no mention of any hardware, would 2023 be officially dead?

 

[Silent]

I wouldn't rule out a 2023 release, but a May 2023 release is looking more and more unlikely. If they were still on track for May, I think they would have to announce it in January. I'm dying for new hardware. We've often heard about how leaks harm companies and developers, and this is actually a good example for me. I feel like I've been waiting since 2021 for a new Switch. If we never had those initial reports that year, I probably wouldn't be so antsy about it. Now it's just constantly "when is it coming out?"

 

[Dark Cloud]

Gotta keep being patient. That’s all we can do.

 

[deletarek]

To preface things I’m not saying this means anything, I just find it funny that the original Switch presentation aired on the 13th of January 2017 (a Friday) and this year will be the first time since then that the 13th of January also lands on a Friday.

Now I obviously don’t expect a presentation next Friday but it sure would’ve been perfect

 

[Raccoon]

To preface things I’m not saying this means anything, I just find it funny that the original Switch presentation aired on the 13th of January 2017 (a Friday) and this year will be the first time since then that the 13th of January also lands on a Friday.

Now I obviously don’t expect a presentation next Friday but it sure would’ve been perfect

this calendar year is a repeat of 2017! friday march 3, friday april 28, friday june 16, friday october 27, they're all here

 

[NintenDuvo]

Nintendo delayed Tears of the Kingdom back at the end of March of last year to spring 2023, how far in advance are these special edition orders put in advance?

 

[LiC]

Could the TotK OLED model were saw pictures of be a "golden sample"?

golden sample - an approved final sample created using the same production processes and components as will be used in mass production

The existence of a golden sample doesn't necessarily mean it's been mass produced yet. Maybe it got to that stage around the time they made the decision to delay the game and they put the kibosh on it in favor of going all in on Switch 2. Maybe some were produced but once the decision to postpone was made additional runs were cancelled and it will be sold in limited quantities as a Nintendo store exclusive.

It was (apparently) photographed finished in a box, and appeared to be in someone's home, like they stole it from a storeroom. The fact that it's in its final packaging means it's probably not a sample. And while it's believable that the edition would be assembled and ready to go this early (since TotK was supposed to launch in 2022 and hardware production plans are presumably not very flexible), it is kind of weird for it to be photographed in this state. Even if they have been assembling them this early, would it really end up in its packaging, and evidently already shipped somewhere where it could be stolen?

So I do think there are some odd things about it. The nature of the photographs seeming like they're in somebody's house, with the Switch running Pokémon in the shots for comparison or proof or whatever, is just weird. The final packaged state of it is weird, unless it's releasing much further ahead of the game than is typical. I'm not saying it's fake, though.

 

[ILikeFeet]

One could say that "4k" textures just means highly detailed at this point. The bigger it is, the more detail it can hold. And with that, technically larger textures do affect performance. Textures aren't utilized straight from RAM/VRAM. They are cached (in texture cache), and the GPU utilizes them from there. Cache is much more limited in size, so it can only hold so many textures at any given time, and textures get swapped in and out. The bigger the texture, the less space there is for other textures to be cached, and more swapping will be required. As @oldpuck mentioned, mipmaps also get utilized. If the scene doesn't necessarily need the most detailed of the texture levels at a point of rendering, it can cache a lower-quality version, thereby saving space.

I think I got that right, but corrections are appreciated.

4K textures can also mean 4096x4096 textures. Hero assets on the premium machines get this treatment, and it's a good resolution for trim sheets and atlases.

Gotta keep being patient. That’s all we can do.

No, let's burn this motha down!

 

[Deleted member 2]

I’m sorry, even despite the staff post, I’m just gonna say this: this is like the seventh or eighth time you said you’re leaving only to come back after a few days or a few weeks.

Oh he gone